Anxiety Disorders
In Chapter 11 "Anxiety Disorders," author Teresa Pigott provides an in-depth review of the definitions and types of anxiety disorders. Additionally, she provides discussions on the types of anxiety disorders that exist, and possible relationships to not only gender, but to the female reproductive cycle as well. Inferences are drawn to possible differences between reported rates of anxiety disorders between males and females, with some insight given to the psychosocial arena relating to prevalence rates among women. Further, Pigott touches upon the nature vs. nurture argument, by explaining the genotype/phenotype concept.
Pigott's descriptions, while accurate, are academic, medicinal, even sterile. It is great reading if you are studying for an exam, or attempting to self-diagnose, or even if you just want to be able to hold your own in a high-brow conversation on the topic. However, some concepts in the reading elucidate personal feelings of inadequacy. These feelings come from the...
Discussions like these are reminiscent of the quote by baseball great Yogi Berra "it's deja vu all over again…," meaning that the very language a culture uses to describe a problem, is in itself, a problem that is self-defining and ultimately circuitous.
One is left with a general feeling of inadequacy for simply being born a woman, for living a male-dominated culture, and for living in a culture where sex is over-sexualized. Through the aegis of the XY chromosome roulette, the subtheme that a woman is left with after reading about anxiety disorder issues such as Pigott outlined (with female bias for the more troublesome aspects) lays within the awful paradigm that 'hysteria' is the birthright that men decide to proclaim upon women, simply as being the owner of the uterus.
Journal 8 -- Sexual Dysfunction
In the…
